The Miracles of the Holy Light (Dr. Haralambos M. Bousias)

 

Dr. Haralambos M. Bousias,
Great Hymnographer of the Church of Alexandria

The miracle of the Holy Light took place for the first time at the Tomb of Jesus, when His Resurrection was accompanied by an abundant light of incomparable brightness. In the Gospel of John we read that “Mary Magdalene came early, while it was still dark, to the tomb.”[1] Mary Magdalene went to the Tomb before it had yet dawned, that is, at night. But when she saw the “stone taken away,” that is, removed, she ran to announce it to the Apostle Peter, who together with John followed her. John, with his youthful vigor, running faster than the mature Peter, arrived first at the tomb. Yet he did not enter, but “stooping down,”[2] after bending, he saw the linen cloths lying on the ground. Peter, who was running behind him with anxiety, entered the Tomb. But how, while deep darkness still prevailed, did John and Peter manage to see the interior of the tomb and the linen cloths that had wrapped Jesus? And especially John, who did not enter the Tomb?

The answer is given by Gregory of Nyssa in his work On the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, where he states that those who followed Peter that night believed in the Resurrection because the Tomb of Christ had been filled with Light, which was visible both spiritually and through the natural senses.[3]

A First Look at the Holy Light (Holy Fire) of Jerusalem 2026

Today in Jerusalem the Holy Light, known in the West as Holy Fire, once again descended into the Tomb of Christ as Patriarch Theophilos of Jerusalem knelt in prayer within the Holy Sepulchre. This ceremony has taken place just about every year for hundreds of years on Holy Saturday, shortly after 2:30pm. With 33 candles in each hand he distributed the Holy Light to the many present. Following the Holy Light ceremony, the flame is taken by plane to other Orthodox communities in countries such as Greece, Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, Bulgaria, Georgia and Romania. In Greece the Holy Light is usually received with the welcome of a Head of State.

Prologue in Sermons: April 11

What We Give to the Poor, God Returns To Us

April 11

(A Word about Evagrius the Philosopher, whom Synesius the Bishop baptized and gave him a written pledge for the sake of almsgiving.)

By Archpriest Victor Guryev

The Word of God says: “He who has mercy on the poor lends to God” (Proverbs 19:17). From this it follows that through the hands of the poor we entrust our goods to God. It is clear that He Himself must return what we have given. But will He return it? And if He returns it, how can one be convinced of this?

Listen, brethren, to the following account; one may think that it will be convincing for you.

Synesius, Bishop of Cyrene, after a long time and many exhortations, converted to Christ a pagan, the philosopher Evagrius, and baptized him with all his household. A year after his baptism, Evagrius — apparently still wavering with doubts about certain truths of Christian teaching — once came to Synesius, entrusted to him a rather large sum of gold, and said that Synesius should distribute it all to the poor, and give him a written receipt in his own hand that the Lord would return to him what was given away in the future life. The Bishop gave Evagrius the receipt and distributed the gold to the poor. After this, Evagrius lived for several years and then fell onto his deathbed. Before his death he called his children and, giving them the receipt of Synesius, instructed them to place it with him in the grave. The children promised to fulfill the command, and when Evagrius died, they placed the receipt with him. Two days passed after Evagrius had been buried, and on the third day he appeared in a dream to Synesius and said: “Come to my grave and take your receipt; the debt, as you assured me, I have received, and now, as proof on my part, I leave you my own written acknowledgment of receipt.” Awakening, Synesius called the sons of Evagrius and asked them whether they had placed anything in the grave with their father. They answered: “Nothing, master, except some document which our father asked to be placed with him.” Then Synesius, recounting to them his dream, invited some of the clergy and many noble persons of the city and went with them to the grave of Evagrius. When the grave was opened, they found in the hands of the dead Evagrius a writing, and when they unfolded it, they saw that in it, written by the hand of the deceased, were the following words: “I, Evagrius the philosopher, greet you, venerable bishop Synesius. I have received the debt which through you I gave to Christ God the Savior, and now I will no longer require from you any account concerning the gold which I once gave to you and through you to Christ God, our Savior.” “And immediately,” the account concludes, “all marveled greatly at the most glorious miracle, and glorified God, crying out for a long time: ‘Lord, have mercy!’”

Great Friday: The Richness of the Lamentations of the Epitaphios (Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Mani)

Great Friday: The Richness of the Lamentations of the Epitaphios

By Metropolitan Chrysostomos III of Mani

A holy and mournful day for the entire Orthodox Christian world. We participate spiritually in the august Passion of the Lord, we feel the Unnailing, and we venerate the All-Holy Tomb. During it, whatever may dominate our society, on this holy day it is not possible for our soul not to be shaken by the reality of the divine Passion — the Crucifixion and the Burial of the Lord.

The hymnography, above all, is unique. With shudders of deepest compunction and great reverence we chant the Lamentations. Among them also the wonderful hymn: “O my sweet springtime, my sweetest Child, where has Your beauty set?” The verse is found in the remarkable poetic composition of Great Friday, which is called the “Lamentations of the Epitaphios.”

These are marvelous antiphons in three stases. The first stasis begins: “The Life was laid in a tomb, O Christ, and the armies of angels were struck with amazement, glorifying Your condescension.” The second: “It is truly meet to magnify You, the Giver of Life, who stretched out Your hands upon the Cross and crushed the power of the enemy,” and the third: “All generations offer a hymn to Your burial, O my Christ.”

Homily One on Great Friday (St. Innocent of Kherson)

Homily on Great Friday

Discourse 1

By Saint Innocent, Archbishop of Kherson and Tauride

The Prophet, having once beheld God upon a Throne exalted in glory, and feeling his own uncleanness and frailty, in terror cried out: “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (Isa. 6:5). What then, brethren, ought we now to say, seeing God not exalted in glory, but humbled by dishonor, not upon a throne, but in a tomb? By what name should we call ourselves, considering that these wounds, this tomb, are the work of our hands? O, wretched are we men, who by our sins not only brought down to earth the Son of God, but also lifted Him up upon the Cross and shut Him in the tomb! Ah, if sin had not raised a dreadful partition between heaven and earth, then we all, like the Prophet, would behold God exalted in glory: the Son of God would appear in the human world as He appears in the angelic worlds; He would visit the earth as a master of the house and a friend. With what joy would the uncorrupted sons of the innocent forefather meet and accompany Him! But now!… O, “who will give to our head water, and to our eyes a fountain of tears” (Jer. 9:1), that we might weep day and night over this image, that we might lament that not only we ourselves from the height of immortality have been cast down into dust, but we have also cast into the tomb the Son of God!

Such, brethren, is the power of sin! It appears as a momentary forgetting of duty, and it disturbs an entire eternity; it is accomplished in a small space of earth, but shakes all the heavens; it harms, seemingly, one man, and the Son of God Himself must suffer for its erasing! Unhappy forefather, would you have stretched forth your hand to the forbidden fruit, if you had foreseen what now lies before our eyes? Would you have desired to become as God, if you had known that this desire would cause God to die upon the Cross?

Homily on Holy Friday and the Cross (St. John of Damascus)

Homily on Holy Friday and the Cross 

Discourse 3

By St. John of Damascus

1. The struggle of our fasting is completed and ends at the Cross. And where ought the end of the victory to arrive, if not at the trophy of Christ? For the Cross is the trophy of Christ, which indeed happened once, but always puts the demons to flight. Truly, where are the idols and the vain slaughters of animals? where are the temples and the fire of impiety? All were extinguished by one holy blood and were cast down, and there remains the Cross — an all-powerful power, an invisible arrow, an immaterial remedy, a pain-relieving blow, a glory full of reproach.

So then, even if I recount countless other things about Christ, and if I astonish my listener by narrating countless miracles, I do not boast so much in those as in the Cross. I mean this by what I say: Jesus came forth from a Virgin; it is a great miracle for marriage to be bypassed and for nature to innovate; but, if the Cross had not existed, the first virgin of Paradise would not have been saved by her deeds.

Now, however, through the event of the Crucifixion the woman is saved first, healing the ancient evil with new gifts. The dead man was raised in Galilee, but he died again; but I, who have been raised through the Cross, can no longer fall into death. Jesus crossed the sea, God in a boat, and the wood offered a temporary benefit; but I have acquired an eternal wood, beneficent, which, using it as a rudder, I confront the spiritual waves of wickedness.

The Hours of Great Friday (Photios Kontoglou)

“The Unnailing,” egg tempera, 1932, Holy Church of Pantanassa, Monastiraki.

The Hours of Great Friday

By Photios Kontoglou

“It was astonishing to behold the Maker of heaven and earth hanging upon a Cross.”

Today, on Great Friday in the morning, they say the Hours in the church. In whatever church one may happen to be, it is good, but whoever happens to be in some monastery or in some deserted chapel, he can say that he truly felt compunction.

The Hours do not have much chanting; most of the texts are read. At the beginning they read from the Psalter three psalms: “Give ear to my words, O Lord; understand my cry,” “Why did the nations rage and the peoples meditate empty things?” “O God, my God, attend to me; why have You forsaken me?” Then they chant two or three troparia, beginning from this: “Today the veil of the temple is rent for a reproof of the lawless, and the sun hides its own rays, seeing the Master being crucified.” And after the priest says the Gospel, they begin again the reading. How well these readings are chosen — the psalms, the prophecies, and the other readings of Holy Scripture!

At the time when the chanters chant and the readers read, you see on the arches painted those things which they chant and those which they read. And you think that the words are one with the images, which are made from fasting hands. You hear the priests chanting the troparion:

The Crucifixion (Photios Kontoglou)

“The Crucifixion,” fresco of the side-chapel of Saint Irene, of the Pesmazoglou family, Kifisia.

The Crucifixion 

By Photios Kontoglou

The night that they seized Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, His disciples from their fear scattered and left Him alone in the hands of the lawless, so that the prophecy might come true: “They will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered.”

The evildoers therefore bound Christ and led Him to the high priest Caiaphas, and there the scribes and the elders were gathered together. Peter was following to see the end. Meanwhile the Pharisees were seeking to find false witnesses in order to put Christ to death. And some were found who said that they heard Him saying that I will destroy the Temple of Solomon and in three days I will build it without stones. Caiaphas stood up and said to Christ: “Do you not answer? What do these testify against you?” And He was silent. The High Priest says to Him again: “Are you the Christ, the Son of God?” And Christ answered him: “I am, and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the power and coming upon clouds.” Then Caiaphas said: “What need do we have of witnesses? You heard that He blasphemed.” And the others cried out that He is guilty and to be put to death. And they took Him and spat on Him and struck Him and said to Him: “Prophesy to us.”

Homily on the Honorable Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ (Theophanes Kerameus)

On the Honorable Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ 

Discourse 27

By Theophanes Kerameus

Perhaps indeed I may seem burdensome to your love, and wearisome, because to you who have labored through the whole night in standing and psalmody I bring, as a burden, the hearing of teaching. But forgive me, since I am insatiable toward your progress; and stretch your eagerness, that you may gain more. For if the God-hating Jews kept vigil through the whole night in order to seize and crucify the Lord, how shall we not keep watch, that we may learn the purpose of the sacred Gospels which have been sung to us and read? Therefore, having shaken off all listlessness from the soul, give heed to what is being said.

And when the Savior had furnished the sacred guests of the Secret Supper, having Himself ministered and set Himself before them as food, He goes out with them to the Mount of Olives, neither avoiding the Passion (for how could He who both foreknew and foretold and was able to escape suffering do so?), nor yet going of His own accord to the murderers; for the former would have been a dissolution of the dispensation and a kind of ignoble cowardice, while the latter would have furnished a pretext to the abominable ones, as though they had not sinned in killing Him who willingly gave Himself up and almost seized the Passion. At the same time He becomes for us also a model of true courage, being seen superior both to cowardice and to rashness, and teaching through Himself neither to rush headlong toward temptations, nor, when they come upon us, to be ignobly terrified.